Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, also known as T2, is a 1991 film about a shape-shifting cyborg who is sent back from the future to kill John Connor before he can grow up to lead the resistance, while a protector cyborg is also sent. It is the sequel to the 1984 film The Terminator.

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Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare – the war against the Machines. The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human Resistance. John Connor; my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me, in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was sent to strike at John himself, when he was still a child. As before, the Resistance was able to send a lone warrior. A protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.

Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. It would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one that measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.

[epilogue] The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life ... maybe we can too.

John: Now don't take this the wrong way, but you are a Terminator, right?

Terminator: Yes. Cyberdyne Systems, Model 101.

John: [pokes at one of Terminator's bullet wounds] Holy shit! You're really real! I mean, you're like a machine underneath, right? But sort of alive outside?

Terminator: I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

John: This is intense. Get a grip, John. OK, uhm, you're not here to kill me. I figured that part out for myself. So what's the deal?

Terminator: My mission is to protect you.

John: Yeah? Who sent you?

Terminator: You did. Thirty-five years from now, you re-programmed me to be your protector here, in this time.

John: Oh, this is deep... [cuts to them riding a motorcycle at night] So this other guy? He's a terminator like you, right?

Terminator: Not like me. A T-1000. Advanced prototype.

John: You mean more advanced than you are?

Terminator: Yes. A mimetic polyalloy.

John: What the hell does that mean?

Terminator: Liquid metal.

John: We spent a lot of time in Nicaragua and places like that. For a while there, she was with this crazy ex-Green Beret guy, running guns. Then there were some other guys. She'd shack up with anybody she could learn from so she could teach me how to be this great military leader. Then she gets busted and it's like, "Sorry kid, your mom's a psycho. Didn't you know?" It's like, everything I'd been brought up to believe was all made of bullshit?. [thumps car hood] I hated her for that. But everything she said was true. She knew... and nobody believed her. Not even me. Listen, we gotta get her out of there.

Terminator: Negative. The T-1000's highest probability for success now would be to copy Sarah Connor and to wait for you to make contact with her.

Terminator: The man directly responsible is Miles Bennett Dyson. In a few months, he will create a revolutionary type of microprocessor.

Sarah: Go on. Then what?

Terminator: In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Sarah: Skynet fights back.

Terminator: Yes. It launches its missiles against their targets in Russia.

John: Why attack Russia? Aren't they our friends now?

Terminator: Because Skynet knows that the Russian counterattack will eliminate its enemies over here.

Sarah: Jesus.

John: I wish I could have met my real dad.

Terminator: You will.

John: Yeah, I guess. When I'm like, 45. They sent him back through time to 1984. Man. He hadn't even been born yet. It messes with your head. Mom and him were only together for, like, one night, but she still loves him, I guess. I see her crying sometimes. She denies it totally of course, like she got something stuck in her eye.

Terminator: [pause] Why do you cry?

John: You mean people?

Terminator: Yes.

John: I don't know. We just cry. You know. When it hurts.

Terminator: Pain causes it?

John: Uh-unh, no, it's different... It's when there's nothing wrong with you but you hurt anyways. You get it?

Terminator: No.

Sarah: [voiceover] Dyson listened while the Terminator laid it all down. Skynet, Judgment Day, the history of things to come. It's not every day that you find out you're responsible for three billion deaths. He took it pretty well.

Dyson: [after the Terminator completes his story] I feel like I'm gonna throw up. You're judging me on things I haven't even done yet. How are we supposed to know?

Sarah: Yeah. Right. How are you supposed to know? Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something, to create a life, feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction-

John: Mom! We need to be a little more constructive here, OK? We still have to stop this from happening, don't we?

Tarissa Dyson: But I thought... Aren't we changing things, I mean right now, changing the way it goes?

Terminator: [grins] Trust me. [uses a minigun on the police force, destroying vehicles and scaring off the police without causing a single casualty]

[After the T-1000 falls into the molten steel vat]

John: Is it dead?

Terminator: Terminated.

John: [brings out a Terminator arm] Will this melt in there?

Terminator: Yes. Throw it in.

John: Adios. [throws the arm into the molten steel vat]

Terminator: And the chip. [John throws chip into the molten steel vat]

Sarah: It's over.

Terminator: No. There is one more chip. [points to his head] And it must be destroyed also. [hands Sarah the controller for the winch] Here. I cannot self-terminate. You must lower me into the steel.

John: No. No!

Terminator: I'm sorry, John. I'm sorry.

John: No! It'll be okay! Stay with us! It'll be okay!

Terminator: I have to go away.

John: No! Don't do it, please! Don't go!

Terminator: I must go away, John.

John: No! No, wait! Wait, you don't have to do this!

Terminator: [gets chain] I'm sorry.

John: No, don't do it! Don't go!

Terminator: It has to end here.

John: I order you not to go! I order you not to go. [breaks down] I order you not to go!

Terminator: I know now why you cry, [touches John's face with finger] but it's something I can never do. [hugs John, turns to face Sarah, who shakes his hand; the Terminator then grabs the steel and holds onto it] Goodbye. [lowered by Sarah into vat, but flashes John and Sarah a thumbs-up before he completely disappears]